In your finally Friday media column: America's love affair with political media knows no bounds, Twitter will get reporters fired, Katie Couric leaning towards ABC, Elizabeth Spiers has eyes everywhere, and Kurt Andersen's, um, indie bistro of words.

The winning entry in our little contest to find someone who'd watched the full 74 minutes of Susan Orlean and Kurt Andersen chatting about a life of letters in the digital age arrived at 3am. Let's meet the winner.

It's strange seeing certified people of letters Susan Orlean and Kurt Andersen hooked up to webcams chatting away about literary culture in the Internet Age. But our larger question is whether anyone has 74 minutes to spend watching.

A Bush-Cheney operative let loose a zinger about orgies and abortion; Kurt Andersen finally watched The Wire; and Neel Shah was discovered something unusual in Oprah's hold music. The Twitterati found some low-hanging fruit.

Kim Cattrall turns 53 today. Kelis is turning 30. Heroes star Hayden Panettiere is turning 20. Google co-founder Sergei Brin is 36. Steve Case, the co-founder of AOL, is turning 51. CBS Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith turns 58. Randy Mastro, a former deputy mayor and now a lawyer, is 53. Actress Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix, Memento) is turning 42. Country music legend Kenny Rogers is 71. C-list reality TV star Brody Jenner is turning 26. And Long Island's very own Amy Fisher turns 35 today. Weekend birthdays below!

Someone sent along this side-by-side of Kurt Andersen and John Hughes, two men whose sensibilities came to define the late '80s and early '90s, for better and for worse. Where have we seen this bit before?

This is fun: Spy founder Kurt Andersen boastfully threw a picture up on his Facebook page of him sitting twenty feet away from a certain president's wife, speaking to a room full of people. Andersen was positively schoolyard-crush giddy.

Kurt Andersen enjoyed an intimate, sexy moment with Michelle Obama; a Chicago Tribune writer made an orgy of his meal and Micki Maynard rocked out. The Twitterati were feeling carnal.

It's a good thing this epic recession is an opportunity to "reset" our culture, as Kurt Andersen tells us, or slough off the chains of corporatism, as per Douglas Rushkoff. Otherwise it would really suck for all the unemployed people.

• Looking to buy a struggling business magazine that's losing advertisers right and left? You're in luck. McGraw-Hill has put BusinessWeek up for sale. [BN]
• The hottest interview in TV-land right now? Bernie Madoff, naturally. [B&C]
• Not such great news for the television biz: Most networks are experiencing a double-digit drop in summer ratings compared to last year. [USAT]
• MySpace is no longer a "place for friends." (That's what Facebook is for.) It's a Web site "for accessing entertainment and related information." [WSJ]
• Former Observer reporter Gabriel Sherman takes a look at Observer owner Jared Kushner in this week's issue of New York. Among other things, Kushner says he found the paper "unbearable" until he bought it. [NYM]
• Brüno's $30 million gross made it No. 1 at the box office this weekend. [THR]

• Are Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie moving to NYC and into a giant apartment at the Apthorp? That's the rumor! [NYDN]
• The good news/bad news for Madonna: She's getting along much better with her ex, Guy Ritchie, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, the reconciliation isn't making Madonna's boyfriend, Jesus Luz, very happy. [DM]
• After six months in St. Lucia, Amy Winehouse is lonely, homesick, and deeply unpopular with the locals. So now she may return to the U.K. where she's totally adored, naturally, [DE]
• Boys will be boys: Leonardo DiCaprio looked like he was "on the prowl" in NYC last week. And Jeremy Piven looked like he was "ogling" Hayden Panettiere the other night. [P6, P6]

The Twitterati were obsessed with the less brilliant Michael Jackson: His most brain-dead lyrics, his worst video moments and his awful neglect at the hands of...you!

All lesbians are Midwesterners who cotton to Kurt Andersen; all Apple copywriters should fear a Steve Jobs tantrum; and all people with cameras are unpaid Associated Press stringers. For the Twitterati, Monday was absolutely something.

A source writes in: ink on the long-rumored deal selling IAC property Very Short List to Jared Kushner and The New York Observer's dry. VSLers have been fired, and the property's clumsily fallen into the Observer's hands, now. Update: confirmed.

Barry Diller's effort to pawn off Very Short List, his failed shopping newsletter for the rich, is turning into a classic New York media folly — a big drama over a puny digital property.

Tom Hanks was honored with the Chaplin Award at the at the 36th annual Film Society of Lincoln Center Gala Tribute last night, where he was joined by an A-list crowd including Julia Roberts, Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, Charlize Theron, Sally Field, Glenn Close, Adrien Brody, Mike Nichols, Graydon Carter, Sam Mendes, Christopher Walken, Christy Turlington and Ed Burns, Christie Brinkley, Lorne Michaels, Jeff Zucker, Nora Ephron and Nick Pileggi, David Gregory, Joy and Regis Philbin, John Patrick Shanley, Bruce Springsteen, Ninah and Michael Lynne, Leslie and Robert Zemeckis, Roger Waters, Jonathan Demme, Jeremy Irons, Abby McGrew and Eli Manning, Ken Burns, Nigel Barker, Rob Wiesenthal, and Gillian and Sylvester Miniter, along with Tom's wife Rita Wilson and son Colin Hanks. [PMc, Wireimage, FWD, USA Today, People]

• Chris DeWolfe is out as the CEO of News Corp.-owned MySpace. [CNN]
• More on Peter Kaplan's split from Jared Kushner's Observer, and the rumor Kaplan is now heading to Condé Nast Traveler. [NYT, WWD, DHD]
• ABC has renewed 12 series, including Dancing with the Stars, The Bachelor, Grey's Anatomy, and Desperate Housewives. [THR]
• Viacom, the parent company BET, is planning to start up a new cable TV channel for middle-aged African-Americans. [NYT]
• Barry Diller is looking to shed his email newsletter Very Short List. Bob Pittman and Jared Kushner have taken a look; co-founders Kurt Andersen and Michael Jackson are considering a management buyout. [NYP]
• The New York Times Co. foundation is suspending its grants and no longer matching employees' charitable donations. [Gawker]

Why isn't there, like, an iPhone app that does all your actual work so you can spend your day chatting with friends on Twitter? Touré, Courtney Hazlett, and Kurt Andersen puzzled over similar questions:

Sara Nelson recently got laid off as the editor of Publishers Weekly, so she's blogging about her "Reinvention." So far she's decided she does not want to be reinvented as Graydon Carter.

Careful what you Twitter! Blogger Ben Leventhal savaged Julia Allison for a brainless tweet. George Stephanopoulos denied inhaling at a White House dinner. And Kurt Andersen just shouldn't have typed anything. Today's 140-character mistakes: